Villages seeing crime rate fall as lights are turned off

And the report by James Fox of Leicestershire County Council to the Leicestershire Safer Communities Strategy Board says crime is down some 10 per cent county wide in areas lights have been turned off.

CASTLE Donington and Quorn have seen some of the biggest drops in crime at night according to a report into the turning off of street lights after midnight.

And the report by James Fox of Leicestershire County Council to the Leicestershire Safer Communities Strategy Board says crime is down some 10 per cent county wide in areas lights have been turned off.

The council has turned off hundreds of lights in a bid to save money.

Analysis from the County Council’s Research and Insight Team says that in the 12 months from March 2013, Castle Donington had the largest fall in crime in the county between the hours of 12:01am and 5:30am.

The number of crimes in the year fell from 165 to 107 when 54 per cent of the lights were turned out.

In Quorn in the same period where 67 per cent of the lights were turned off, crime nearly halved from 35 incidents to 17.

However in Mountsorrel, crime has increased slightly, the fourth highest increase in the county seeing 49 incidents reported between March 2013 and March 2014 compared to 41 over the previous year.

The statistics do not include domestic abuse cases and includes crimes that occurred in a period of time, for example while people are on holiday.

Mr Fox said: “In summary, given the general trend of the data, none of the results in individual areas can be considered statistically to be significantly different from what would be expected, whether an increase or decrease in crimes has been shown.

“Of the 97 areas analysed, 36 saw an increase in crime and 46 saw a decrease and, overall, almost half (45) of the areas analysed saw no change, or an increase or decrease by one crime only.”